


my scraped mouth tastes of iron

by gabriphales



Series: gomens drabble hell [9]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, its like. trichotillnomania but for wings, local bastard angel has ocd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:55:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23314981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabriphales/pseuds/gabriphales
Summary: incredibly self indulgent ocd gabriel fic
Series: gomens drabble hell [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664713
Kudos: 20





	my scraped mouth tastes of iron

**Author's Note:**

> hnngigngng ocd gabriel is my pet headcanon i like to project my issues onto him

It used to just be tedious.

An inordinately time-consuming procedure, sucking up every hour of the day that wasn't spent sifting through stacks of paperwork, signing off on things he barely bothers to read. Something he could brush off as a mildly irritating quirk. An idiosyncrasy his fellow Archangels would eventually come to accept, even if they didn't understand.

They did neither. And as decades went on, years turning to centuries, and centuries to millenia, Gabriel's habit turns to something far more insidious. 

He never lets the other angels touch his wings. Grooming-- _communal_ grooming, used to be a fairly popular pasttime. Something you'd do with your friends, in packs of three or four. Perhaps only two if you were feeling particularly intimate, and wanted to be showy about it. After the War, after so many of his friends (former friends, _former_ friends, he reminds himself) fell en masse, most of the angels gave up on any hopes of mainting their treasured customs. What had once been a way to bond cultivated an open, pulsing sore where the fallen might have laid, were they still one with Heaven's grace.

Gabriel misses it. He misses having someone to groom his wings for him. He misses an existence before he even knew angels _could_ fall. After that, after all _that_ went down--that's when his peculiarities started, as Michael called them. He wishes he were only just peculiar. Plenty of angels are peculiar, and they manage to not step _too_ far out of line. As it is, he feels like he's on a constant brink of crashing into said line, and shattering it entirely. Ruining everything he's worked so hard to maintain. Ruining his reputation, his safety, his _status_ \--

his wings. His wings, he _needs_ his wings to be the same. Regardless of everything else, so long as they're pure, perfect, spotlessly groomed, he'll be alright. So long as they don't change, he won't either. And he doesn't want to change. He can't change, can't stand the thought of it. It's too much to bear, hot ichor in his belly, in his head, rocking the boat of his temples 'til he's nearly seasick with it.

There's blood under his fingernails. He can't wash out the stain, no matter how deftly, how defiantly he tries. His stomach hurts, a faint churning that eventually turns to scourge-stricken knots. The surging adrenaline that won't just _shut off_ tearing into his insides, turning him to a weak, wobbly-kneed coward. He has to clean this up, he knows. There's still feathers on his office floor. White, white and red. At least he'd had the mind to keep the blood off of his papers today. Michael had scolded him for that last month. She doesn't get it, doesn't understand. Nobody does, nobody does, not even _Gabriel_ understands why he's like this. 

He can't stop, he has to keep looking. Keep checking for black, over and over, over and over and over and _over_ again. Until his fingers are sore, tendons bruised from the inside out. Until his knuckles ache from it. Until his desk's splattered with puddles of his own unfortunate aftermath.

Until he's certain he won't fall. 

But that certainty never comes. If only ever temporarily relieved, by the next moment he has alone to himself, he'll be back at it again. Picking, pulling, ripping out his own feathers like the sting barely bothers him. And it shouldn't, he thinks. He should be used to it by now. But he isn't. He's never gotten used to this.

He isn't sure if he ever will.


End file.
